Ray’s Reflections – pompon.io

Cathedrals of Climbing

Analyzing stair-climbing workouts in new mountain athletes

analysis

sports

For 30 years, the Explorer’s Club of Pittsburgh has run a mountaineering school through the winter, guiding students in outings and exercises to build advanced skills for mountain climbing. Every student of the mountaineering school trains on the stairs of the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning. A typical training session consists of multiple repetitions up the Cathedral’s 34-story stairwell, carrying a weighted backpack to simulate real mountain ascents. I analyzed data from 10 years of training logs, including 129 students and 10,000+ repetitions of the stairs. From 2011-present, students’ climbing paces exhibited consistent response to heavier packs and footwear.

Simple Board Game Simulation in R

personal

fun

I was at a friend’s house for game night last weekend, and I was introduced to a game called The Mind. The premise is simple; a deck of cards is numbered one through one…

Alpine Climbing in the North Cascades

trip reports

adventure

Over a long weekend in July 2025, six ECP’ers convened for an alpine climbing trip in the Washington Pass area of North Cascades National Park. While other ECP’ers were in…

Rethinking Some Statistical Principles

reading

reflections

I’ve begun reading Statistical Rethinking by Richard McElreath,¹ and I wanted to log some of my thoughts that come to mind while working through his ideas on modern…

A Tool to Visualize Outdoor Climbing Performance

hobbies

adventure

Recently, I’ve been interested in developing ways to assess my own performance as an outdoor rock climber. One classic tool for evaluating a climber’s history on routes is…

A Summary of My Research in Stats and Medicine

personal

reflections

In this post, I review progress in my research so far, and distill my work into three themes spanning topics in biomedical sciences and applied statistics.

Alpine Training in West Virginia’s Wilderness

trip reports

adventure

An outing with the Explorer’s Club of Pittsburgh. We hiked through the night to reach our rock climbing objective at Seneca Rocks, WV. We summitted and bivied atop the rocks.

Climbing the Sharkstooth of Rocky Mountain NP

trip reports

adventure

A day-long adventure in Colorado’s most famous national park. We encountered a steep snow field on our approach to the Sharkstooth Ridge.

Summiting the Grand Teton via Exum Ridge

trip reports

adventure

My first real mountaineering trip, in which I climbed the Grand Teton using a classic rock climbing route to the summit.